Journal Entry

Wild weekend. I've said before, and I'll stand by it. I'm doing too much on a weekend to keep my blog updated. I don't really apologize for that. Problem is, if I let Wednesday and Thursday slip, then that easily becomes a weeklong backlog.

Err...not that any of you really care. I'm just explaining that to me, probably.

Friday, September 28th
I called Thursday's relaxing evening a calm before the storm. I was being silly, but Friday really did end up being a hell of a thing. Well...as much of a hell as you can get, spending ten hours motionless in front of a TV.

Halo 3! That's what I'm getting at. K-- got his free 360 back when, and this is really the first game any of us have been excited about for it. And, really, most of the excitement was K--'s. Sort of like the Harry Potter finale, I didn't much care about Halo 3, in spite of the fact that we've all had some really good times playing the Halo franchise over the last five or six years. Those times even got a starring role in the early parts of Josh's Story, actually.

But, yeah, I thought it'd be fun, but I wasn't that thrilled. K--, on the other hand, has been bouncing up and down on his toes in the throes of his excitement, for at least a month now. And, eventually, that got infectious, so when he started talking about having an all-night Halo 3 party Friday night (it was released on Tuesday), that actually sounded like a lot of fun.

We got B-- and E-- involved (E-- is a magnificent bastard when it comes to Halo multiplayer), and D-- showed up for a while, and we shipped the wives off to a night of cropping photos, and K-- even got some of those gamer chairs just for the occasion. Sweet. Pizza and soda and alcohol finished off the rest of the required supplies, and we settled in to play.

I actually showed up around 6:30 Friday afternoon. K-- ordered the pizzas around 7:00, and got enough to share with B-- and E--, who showed up shortly after. We ate and talked with them for a while, then played while they watched for a bit to give them a feel for the game, then they left and K-- and I settled in to seriously cover some ground.

We'd heard that the game had about 6-10 hours of gameplay in the main campaign, and it was our goal to make it through it. Now, we're not as young as we used to be, but hey, we'd have the whole weekend to recover, right? So he bought about six gallons of the limited edition, marketing hype Mt. Dew Halo 3 Game Fuel (just Mt. Dew with extra caffeine and some ginseng), and I brought over some Sugar Free Redbull (and about a gallon of Vodka) and we started out the night with Vodka Game Fuels (or Rocket Fuels, as B-- was calling 'em), and ended the night with Redbull Game Fuels, when we got to that 1:00/2:00 zone where we couldn't afford alcohol if we wanted to stay awake. But, yeah, all around we were just gulping down the toxic chemicals.

We won, though, and that makes it all worth it. Around 4:00 AM, we finished the story, watched the credits, and then decided to play some multiplayer instead of going to bed. That kept us up until about 6:00, when we finished a first-to-25-kills game of infinite rocket launchers. Then we went to bed.

Umm...remember I mentioned a couple posts ago about my high blood pressure? Well, I've been entirely off the caffeine for three weeks now. Then, in one night, I drank all of it. So, even though I crashed in the incredibly comfortable guest bed around 6:00, I didn't get to sleep. I was too busy ODing on caffeine. My heart was pounding, I could feel my pulse in my head, and there was no way I was going to fall asleep.

So, I dunno, there's some moral to the story there. I finally fell asleep around 7:30, then woke up at 11:30 to head home. Oh, I guess that makes this Saturday.

Saturday, September 29th
So, yeah, I got home around noon, had lunch with T-- and played with AB, and learned that our reduced cable lineup wasn't going to be showing the OU game. (Oh, if I'd known then....)

T-- had had a pretty long night with AB waking up (more on that later), and so she suggested I take the baby over to K-- and N--'s to watch the game with them, and leave her with an afternoon to nap and watch movies. So D-- came by and picked me up, and we went over to watch the Sooners get humiliated by Colorado, and that was no fun.

Then we dropped the baby off with T--, and D-- and I went up to Best Buy because he wanted to buy a new TV. Cool, cool. That took more than an hour, though, and kinda pushed our dinner plans back until they became lunch plans on Sunday. Well worth it, though. He got a very cool TV, and we were even lucky enough to have E-- swing by with the van to help us get it to his place (so he didn't have to wait three days for delivery). Sweet.

After that, I went back to the house to watch some TV with T--, but I faded fast, and ended up in bed around 9:30. I slept.

Sunday, September 30th
So. Sunday morning I woke up for church, helped T-- get AB ready, and then discovered during the sermon that I had finished my story and didn't really have a new one to work on. Instead, I finally wrote out AB's dedication poem that T-- asked me to start working on a while back.

I didn't quite finish it, and wasn't ready to show it off yet, but when I got out to the car, T-- asked me what I'd been working on. For humorous effect (and not at all to actually deceive my wife, I want to make that clear), I told her that I'd been working on a poem about how cool the Cowboys are. For your classical entertainment, I'll provide a copy of the verse I recited off-hand:

Romo, Tony Romo,
He's no homo
No matter what Dan says.

This year, maybe this year,
Watch without fear,
As we make all the plays.

Playoffs, in the playoffs,
Without a loss.
Superbowl starts today.

Man, I'm good. Okay, I didn't do all of that off-the-cuff, but I got a chunk of it, and T-- thought it was so funny that she asked me to finish it. All of the sudden I'm Alexander Pope up in this piece.

Anyway, I was actually working on the dedication, which I'll likely post here once it's done. I'm happy with it, so far.

Lunch was Texas Roadhouse, which really hit the spot. Then we came back to our place to watch the Cowboys tear the Rams to pieces, which was fun. It's looking like a good year, even with the injuries.

After that, K-- and N-- went to the song service at church, and T-- took a nap while I worked on my homework for the marriage seminar. Then we all went up to Poblano's for dinner, because T-- said she needed some margarita and everyone suddenly caught the bug. That was fun, and most delicious, and N-- had a "Buy One Entree, Get the Second Free" coupon, so it was even reasonably priced (until you count the margaritas).

Then everybody headed home, and T-- and I watched some TV, then headed to bed pretty early.